Underwhelming performance from my 1080

[faziten]

4 hours ago, Acerpwns said:

I recently upgraded from a 970 to a 1080 and i seem to be having the same issues as before. i.e in GTA V i keep dipping in high 30s with Nvidia's settings, same issues with Overwatch (Everything Ultra except shadows and fog detail with 100% render scale). I can keep 144 fps in most of the time but sometimes it dips in the mid 80s. I was having these issues with my 970 aswell (except i was using slightly lower settings). While gaming my CPU stays aroung 97-99% load while the 1080 jumps from 60-90% load.

OP i might clarify some things after reading some of your answers. 

 

Games do bottleneck in different ways (and it's not always game developer fault).

1) Far Cry 3, 4, and primal will abuse one particular thread pegging it at 100% if you have something beefier than a 970/480. This is a CPU bottleneck, yes but is induced by a poorly optimized game. (which relies on a game engine from the DX10 era). 

2) Crysis 3 in Welcome to the jungle map, will use up to 16 threads, but when you pair an i5 with something higher than 970/480 the i5 will be 100% usage. This is because sadly, shadows cant be GPU processed in that game, and every grass fiber on that map has it's own shadow... guess what: Shadows are mostly CPU related hence the CPU bottleneck. Yet again this is a game engine related bottleneck. Similar from the previous one, but here, the cpu is being used to the max, nothing to do about. 

3) Early Assasin Creed Unity had an API bottleneck. The increased amount of polygons in certain moments of the scene would yield a drawcalls bottleneck in DX11 API that (just like first case) is single threaded. Hence every CPU suffered, the less clock it had the worst. But there also were other parts of the game where a lot of NPCs were in the same place and it tanked every known CPU at that time. That is a different bottleneck within the game... AI is a CPU related thing, many NPC equals many A.I calcs to perform, here a multiple core cpu would faint less than a less powerful one, even with the API bottleneck in place. You can see every Assassin creed suffering in i5's since Unity because of this. (high NPC counts). 

4) Rise of the Tomb Raider early versions, showed an i3 + AMD gpu being a clear bottleneck while the same i3+Nvidia performed much better. (Digital Foundry), that was because AMD driver for DX11 titles is single threaded reliant while NV driver is mulithereaded. This was a GPU Driver bottleneck that happened until some patches fixed this issue. 

 

It has nothing to do with your CPU being weak or old or whatever. It's a developer decision, game design and API, Driver issue that is oblivious to the CPU installed.

That's why you will hear people say "an 5820K bottlenecks a 1080" while others say "my i5 does not bottleneck a gazillion 1080 in SLI". They can be all true in their respective game and scenario, but not universally valid for every game in every possible map. May sound trivial buy it's not. It generates a lot of confusion. To compare bottleneck scenarios you must use a fixed testing procedure. An i5 may not bottleneck a 1080 SLI in 4K but will bottleneck the hell out a 1080 in 1080p in games like GTA5. Same hardware, same game but different resolutions change the chocking point from GPU to CPU. 

 

Sadly, jumping between a 970 to a 1070 with an i5 won't be enough in GTA5, since like Crysis 3 can and will use all it's available juice, it's even more noticeable in Grassy areas like Vinewood, you could lesser the CPU impact activating GPU SoftShadows but this will impact on your GPU hard since it's not only a GPU algorithm but it's also more taxing than CPU ones.

 

What you can do in this particular game? 

1) Overclock CPU (watch temperatures).

2) Get the fastest ram Available (the reason why is related to a Digital Foundry video i could link if needed)

3) Get an i7 for your platform. (4790K +OC) 

 

This is a tiny bit more precise approach to why is your CPU bottlenecking a 1070 here and nowhere else.

It's easy to call "this XXX CPU will bottleneck YYY GPU" or "ZZZ Game is garbage optimization wise" blah, blah, blah. But the technical reality is a bit more complicated than "an i5 is enough for gaming" or "1080 is overkill for 1080p" like you will hear plenty times. 

 

Take general approaches to problem resolution as guidelines and remember there are a lot of settings to mess with so you get better performance without too much of a visual impact. 

 

Lastly: 

Bottleneck will always exist by definition. Since you wont be able to find a particular game that can make use of exactly 100% and 100% of your GPU and CPU at the same time. Since games have different performance needs across the whole title. 

 

Cheers!

[Asses_Of_Fire]

i5's tend to have these dips in games like gtav and battlefield 1. the i7's although will have close to the same max fps as a i5 they always have much higher MINIMUM fps.